INNOVATORS VS COVID 19

Charlotte Gréant, Startups.be : “Cash is key and a good team spirit can conquer big challenges”

Published

4 years ago

06/04/2020

Kokou Adzo

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID19 times?

We’re doing great! Enjoying quality time in our little bubble and trying to make the best out of it!

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company

My passion for technology and startups accelerated while living and working in San Francisco and grew even more after I moved to New York to do business development for European startups.

How does your company innovate?

Open innovation is key. We do have a close connection with inspiring startups all over the world and implement new technologies as much as we can to make work more fun and more efficient.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business and how are you coping?

As we organize a lot of events, we’re heavily disrupted by the current situation. Transformation of our face to face events to virtual events, for example, a limited edition of The Big Squeeze, our startup event on time squeezing. In addition, we partnered up with Conversation Starter, a networking tool, to organize the biggest online networking event to date in Belgium: The Big Bounce. We’re being creative and look for other ways to service our community from afar. With this online way of working we are fighting this challenge.

Did you have to make difficult choices and what are the lessons learned?

Lessons learned for us is that cash is key and that a good team spirit can conquer quit some challenges. Our company culture is based on trust so the shift to 100% remote work went very smooth. The fact that we have an ok amount of cash to cover 6 months of crisis gives us the time to shift the business model and keep on working hard.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety, how do you project yourself and your company in the future ?

Personally, I love to work out. I think it’s important that now that we work from home, we make sure to close our laptops from time to time so we don’t start ‘living in our office’. Furthermore with everyone working from home we organize a weekly virtual get together and small quiz. Make time for fun as well, that keeps the connection strong.

Your final thoughts

Let’s hope we can fight this pandemic asap so that the economy can revive. It’s not all negative though, I hope that some of the lessons learned (about remote work etc.) will not go away.